I Taught Money Mindset While $86,000 in Debt. Here's the Truth

This one makes me a little ooh, because it's vulnerable. But every time I share the more intimate stories, it creates deeper connection and trust, so here we go.

In June of 2020, Kaila and I launched our very first program together, Manifesting Money Masterclass. Fifty women signed up. It was a $10K launch, the first thing we ever sold together. I was teaching women how to make more money, manifest more money, and manage it. Limiting beliefs, worthiness, money as energy, income and expense trackers, all of it.

And the entire time I was teaching that course, and for the next four years, I owed $86,000 in student loan debt.

Sit in that number with me for a second. I was standing in front of women on Zoom, teaching them to build a healthy relationship with money, while carrying one of the heaviest money burdens of my life. Two degrees, six years of university, two jobs the whole way through, a ten-girl party house in Halifax, travel, memories I still treasure, and at the end of it all, a bill that stayed due for years. It wasn't until we started My Aligned Purpose and I did the deep, intentional money work that I paid off every single dollar. In April of 2024, the last of the $86,000 was gone.

The myth about leaders

There's a myth that doesn't get said out loud very often: that leaders are supposed to have already arrived at the destination before they're allowed to guide someone there. I want to challenge that, because I've lived enough of my own story to know it isn't true.

When I taught that first masterclass, I wasn't lying to anybody. I deeply understood the principles I was teaching. I understood the emotional weight of debt, the mindset work, the worthiness piece, because I was living inside the exact feeling those teachings were meant to address. My closeness to the problem is what let me teach it with depth. I knew where the rocks were. I knew where people would fumble, because I was right there too. I knew how it feels when the problem you help people solve creeps in at 2:00 in the morning.

If you're a coach, a healer, a consultant, or a leader, and some part of you feels like a fraud because your own version of the struggle isn't fully resolved, hear this: you're not disqualified from leading people through something just because you're still walking your own road with it. You're qualified because you understand the terrain.

Where the pressure comes from

Why do so many of us feel like we need to have crossed the finish line before we're allowed to take somebody else there? Part of it is the industry. Social media is a wall of polished before-and-afters, highlight reels of transformation with the messy middle cut out. That creates a quiet, slightly dangerous belief that if you haven't solved it yet, you're not ready to teach it.

And part of it is how we're wired. Most of us became coaches and guides because we naturally hold space for other people. When you're built that way, admitting you're still figuring something out can feel like letting people down. Every time I stepped up to teach money in those early years, there was a little whisper: "Who are you to teach this when you still owe $86,000?"

Here's what I've come to know. Nobody I've ever coached needed me to be debt-free. They needed me to understand what it feels like to want a different relationship with money, to be actively building one, and to be open and willing to talk about it. You don't need to be at point Z. If you've made it from A to N, you can absolutely walk someone through the part of the road you know. It's the grade four helping the kindergartner: you don't need a university degree to have more answers than a five-year-old.

One caveat, because it matters: you do need lived experience in the thing you lead. I would make a terrible divorce coach. I've never been divorced, my parents aren't divorced, and I have no experience of that terrain at all. You don't need the finish line, but you do need to have walked some of the journey.

How to lead while you're still in it

Be honest with yourself about what you actually know versus what you're still learning, and teach from where you are, not from where you wish you were. That difference is subtle and it's everything.

Let your process become part of the journey. You don't have to share every detail. This May nearly took me out: four really uncomfortable conversations I'll always keep confidential, because those details belong to the people involved. But I didn't hide that I was struggling. I talked about it on the podcast and in stories, because my clients will face months like that too, and now I can walk them through it. When I shared that I'd paid off the debt, it didn't make me less credible. It made everything I teach land harder, because it was real and they could see it.

And give yourself the compassion you'd give a client. You would never tell a client she isn't allowed to grow because she hasn't solved it yet. Extend the same grace to yourself. If you show up flawless and gatekept, people don't trust you anyway. They're not expecting perfection. They're expecting honesty, and someone a few steps ahead who can say "watch this part, turn here."

Your job is not to be finished. Your job is to keep growing, out loud, in front of the very people you're here to help.

Working through your own money story? Take the free 30-second quiz to find your clearest path to more cash flow, or go deeper with cash FLOW, our signature self-paced course. This post comes from an episode of the My Aligned Purpose podcast, which you can listen to and follow here. And for weekly mindset, money, and strategy magic, join our newsletter.